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Grond Cosmic Revamp
reaperwithnoname
Posts: 388 Arc User
Finally, Grond has come to rest, in this forgotten corner of the desert. Now is the time to strike!
The idea here is to bring Grond in line with the other Cosmics. First, Grond's wandering ways would have to end to make way for an open mission along the same lines as the other Cosmics. The exact location can be left as an exercise for the developers.
Grond's attacks will in general be the same as before, but will be considerably more powerful, and the strongest such attacks will allow players to split damage in the same way as Teleiosaurus' bite.
When he hits 2/3 hp, Grond will summon three radioactive pools, one of which will always be directly in front of him (with the other two always being within melee range, but not directly in front of him). These pools will look identical to the ones that the Grond Clone in Teleios Ascendant summons. Initially, the pools will do nothing, but ten seconds after they appear, they will inflict extremely large amounts of damage over time to anyone standing in them. However, this damage is split among everyone who stands in the pool. Furthermore, the pools will also inflict a debuff to everyone standing in it that causes them to take more damage from Grond's main attacks (but not his AoE ones). If no one stands in a pool, Grond will be rapidly healed (much like Qwyjibo and his hearts). If, however, someone dies in a pool, Grond will also be healed somewhat (much like Kigatilik's ability to heal from player death). Finally, Grond will occasionally dismiss and then immediately re-summon the pools (likely in different locations).
To add another wrinkle to the battle, when he hits 1/2 hp, Grond will also begin summoning a fourth pool as well. This pool will be colored differently from the others, but will operate in the same way, with two exceptions. The first difference is that the damage it inflicts will be significantly less (it will not need to be split among players to be survived). The second difference is that it will heal Grond when players stand in it, instead of when they don't. This "anti-pool" will therefore need to be avoided.
Also, at random points in the battle, but only when below the 2/3 health mark, Grond will squat down and prepare to jump into the wild blue yonder. If the players do not successfully interrupt him, he will escape and the open mission will fail (albeit with a much lower restart timer). To successfully interrupt Grond's escape, players must inflict a certain amount of damage to Grond while he is preparing the jump. Furthermore, the players must inflict a certain number of stacks of Rooted or Nailed to the Ground (they are added together) to Grond while he prepares the jump (any resistances he may have to them are suspended during this move). The number of stacks required should be very low, as most players are not expected to have brought the ability to inflict them.
A fight with this new Grond would look something like this:
Three tanks will draw Grond's attention and split the damage from his main attacks, while healers keep them going and dps characters attack from safe angles, pausing only to block AoEs. When Grond hits 2/3 hp, the pools appear, with one of them directly on the tanks. The tanks then have ten seconds to rotate Grond before the pool's debuff activates and Grond obliterates them. At the same time, all other players will have to squeeze themselves into the correct pools to prevent Grond from healing and split the damage that the pools inflict. Again, the healers must keep everyone healthy, and the dps must continue to do their job, all while everyone avoids the "anti-pool".
Occasionally, Grond will dismiss and re-summon the pools, with one of them going on the tanks (again), and the process begins again.
Eventually, Grond will begin his escape attempt. At that point, everyone will unload as much damage as possible, as well as putting as many Rooted and Nailed to the Ground stacks as they can on him. If they beat the check, Grond's escape attempt will fail and battle will go back to normal, but if the battle continues long enough, he may try again.
If the tanks fail to split Grond's damage properly, or fail to stay out of the pools, they will be killed. If the players are unable to stay alive in the pools (or stand in the wrong one), Grond will heal. If Grond's escape attempt is not stopped, the mission will fail. However, if all of these things are prevented, Grond will eventually fall.
It might be necessary for the number of pools summoned by Grond to scale with the number of players fighting him. In the event of many pools being summoned, some of them might need to not be in melee range, since players should have to seek out the pools, which won't happen if Grond is completely surrounded by them.
Inclusion in the Giant Monster Daily Quest may or may not be necessary, and unique reward drops may or may not be necessary as well.
This suggestion is itself open to suggestions.
The idea here is to bring Grond in line with the other Cosmics. First, Grond's wandering ways would have to end to make way for an open mission along the same lines as the other Cosmics. The exact location can be left as an exercise for the developers.
Grond's attacks will in general be the same as before, but will be considerably more powerful, and the strongest such attacks will allow players to split damage in the same way as Teleiosaurus' bite.
When he hits 2/3 hp, Grond will summon three radioactive pools, one of which will always be directly in front of him (with the other two always being within melee range, but not directly in front of him). These pools will look identical to the ones that the Grond Clone in Teleios Ascendant summons. Initially, the pools will do nothing, but ten seconds after they appear, they will inflict extremely large amounts of damage over time to anyone standing in them. However, this damage is split among everyone who stands in the pool. Furthermore, the pools will also inflict a debuff to everyone standing in it that causes them to take more damage from Grond's main attacks (but not his AoE ones). If no one stands in a pool, Grond will be rapidly healed (much like Qwyjibo and his hearts). If, however, someone dies in a pool, Grond will also be healed somewhat (much like Kigatilik's ability to heal from player death). Finally, Grond will occasionally dismiss and then immediately re-summon the pools (likely in different locations).
To add another wrinkle to the battle, when he hits 1/2 hp, Grond will also begin summoning a fourth pool as well. This pool will be colored differently from the others, but will operate in the same way, with two exceptions. The first difference is that the damage it inflicts will be significantly less (it will not need to be split among players to be survived). The second difference is that it will heal Grond when players stand in it, instead of when they don't. This "anti-pool" will therefore need to be avoided.
Also, at random points in the battle, but only when below the 2/3 health mark, Grond will squat down and prepare to jump into the wild blue yonder. If the players do not successfully interrupt him, he will escape and the open mission will fail (albeit with a much lower restart timer). To successfully interrupt Grond's escape, players must inflict a certain amount of damage to Grond while he is preparing the jump. Furthermore, the players must inflict a certain number of stacks of Rooted or Nailed to the Ground (they are added together) to Grond while he prepares the jump (any resistances he may have to them are suspended during this move). The number of stacks required should be very low, as most players are not expected to have brought the ability to inflict them.
A fight with this new Grond would look something like this:
Three tanks will draw Grond's attention and split the damage from his main attacks, while healers keep them going and dps characters attack from safe angles, pausing only to block AoEs. When Grond hits 2/3 hp, the pools appear, with one of them directly on the tanks. The tanks then have ten seconds to rotate Grond before the pool's debuff activates and Grond obliterates them. At the same time, all other players will have to squeeze themselves into the correct pools to prevent Grond from healing and split the damage that the pools inflict. Again, the healers must keep everyone healthy, and the dps must continue to do their job, all while everyone avoids the "anti-pool".
Occasionally, Grond will dismiss and re-summon the pools, with one of them going on the tanks (again), and the process begins again.
Eventually, Grond will begin his escape attempt. At that point, everyone will unload as much damage as possible, as well as putting as many Rooted and Nailed to the Ground stacks as they can on him. If they beat the check, Grond's escape attempt will fail and battle will go back to normal, but if the battle continues long enough, he may try again.
If the tanks fail to split Grond's damage properly, or fail to stay out of the pools, they will be killed. If the players are unable to stay alive in the pools (or stand in the wrong one), Grond will heal. If Grond's escape attempt is not stopped, the mission will fail. However, if all of these things are prevented, Grond will eventually fall.
It might be necessary for the number of pools summoned by Grond to scale with the number of players fighting him. In the event of many pools being summoned, some of them might need to not be in melee range, since players should have to seek out the pools, which won't happen if Grond is completely surrounded by them.
Inclusion in the Giant Monster Daily Quest may or may not be necessary, and unique reward drops may or may not be necessary as well.
This suggestion is itself open to suggestions.
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He has most of the powers of OV grond (Radiating Strike, Nuclear Debris, Roaring Fury, Nuclear Shockwave, Atom Splitting Fist, Radiation Ground Pound). Base damage is higher, some effect radius might be as well. He also gains a lunge power and some special mechanics:
Special Mechanic: Irradiate Others: all his attacks apply Irradiated for 60s to all targets. Radiating Strike and Nuclear Debris also refresh all stacks of Irradiated on the target. An irradiated target has +10% all damage strength, -10% all damage resistance. If an Irradiated target reaches 20 stacks of Irradiated, they achieve Critical Mass. Critical mass causes the victim to be stunned and glow brightly; after 3s they explode, doing 40,000 crushing and particle damage in a 50' radius. This is irresistible by the exploding target (other targets resist normally).
Special Mechanic: Irradiate Self: as Grond takes damage he acquires (but does not refresh) stacks of Irradiated. Grond is also capable of achieving critical mass; his version takes 5s and deals 120,000 crushing and particle damage in a 150' radius.
Special Power: Absorb Radiation: Expires a single stack of Irradiated from all targets in a 100' radius. For each stack absorbed, Grond heals (this is mostly a dps check). If expiring single stacks isn't possible, just heal based on the number of irradiated targets.
The intent is that Grond requires tank trading: any single tank will eventually either be defeated by massive defense debuffs or achieve critical mass, so it's necessary for a couple of tanks to trade off, allowing the Irradiated stacks to expire. Grond going critical is slow enough and predictable enough that it should be possible to do it controllably and not defeat too many people.
It could do with some additional mechanics, such as something with area denial, but that is prone to being "guess what, CO hates melee".
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Also, it would be nice if one of the Cosmics made good use of waves of adds, irradiates in this case.
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Mega Destroyer Cosmic Revamp (too easy to get multiple MCs going for the timer to matter?)
Big Fishy in Lemuria (I'd love to have a good reason to go there, just like we've now got reasons for MI)
Cosmic in Vibora Bay (same as above)
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I have "defeated" Grond with one character, only not so much. I didn't get credit even though I helped fight him with all I had at one of his landing points.
Some people might have a "cheat" tool (even just a printout) to know his path or they may have just memorized it, but I spent more time trying to get to where he was than being where he was and so when he was defeated I didn't do enough damage or whatever.
Maybe they felt that this, or the generally low number of people that actually defeat him, to be enough and so they skipped him as part of the cosmic revamp.
I think, though, that it's just a question of time and payout. Beating Grond takes time, but the payout is what? A perk?
Hardly worth the bother for most players, especially for those that already have the perk.
I can not remember the last time I saw anyone trying to get a Grond hunt going.
As far as changing the fight and adding mechanics to make it different from the other cosmic fights...
1) Movement: Grond can still move between a few different locations. Just give the players a chance to hold him and reduce the overall number of destinations.
2) Grondling attacks: Periodically, a horde of powerful Grondlings appear to attack the heroes.
3) Aggro wipes: Grond's attention wanders, so periodically apply an aggro wipe to whoever has his attention at that point. That makes having a few good tanks a great benefit. The "main" tank won't be the main tank indefinitely, so the back-ups have to maintain a high aggro as well, and then they need to work to get their aggro back up so that when Grond aggro-wipes the other tanks, they will have enough aggro to keep him off of the DPS and healers.
4) Army "help": Periodically an airstrike would come from Project Greenskin. Missiles would come raining down on the battlefield hitting Grond, yes, but also hitting the heroes.
I'm thinking like the volcanic rocks at Qwijybo... Dealing damage and knockback to whoever they hit, only hurting Grond, too. Only instead of one every once in a while, it would be several all at once. Pretty much inescapable, but they wouldn't be an ongoing thing.
5) Radioactive pools: Not anything he specifically spawns, just things that would be around wherever he lands.
The pools would deal particle DPS and apply a stacking particle resistance debuff, so the longer you stayed in the pool the more damage you would take.
Add a particle attack or two to Grond's arsenal and then factor in the knockback his attacks and possibly the Grondlings and missile strikes do, and these become something to watch out for.
Really, I would like to see the next Cosmic just have mechanics not already used.
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Nowhere in your initial post do you explain the notion that ranged characters will have to stand in the pools because there won't be enough melee characters to do it, and in any event it requires a massive assumption that the players that show up for this open world challenge will be composed of some specific numbers of specific roles.
How do you know that there won't be enough melee characters to stand in these pools? I was involved in a Qwyjibo fight where I had to swing a lot further around to the front than I liked because there were so many melee DPS at that time.
Had similar experiences with Teleiosaurus, with melee DPS jockeying for the prime positions, where they were not getting hit by her tail or breath attacks.
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But especially this:
seem like awesome places for an epic brawl.
I think a fun thing would be to have random scary monster mutants come crawling out of the hills in all directions when the fight with the big guy starts. nothing as special as Kiga's hounds, or the fire hearts or anything like that, just an ARMY that needs to be massacred repeatedly to keep the numbers game down. Maybe have them get a buff from standing close to Grond? nothing drastic, maybe the equivalent of the difference between a regular enemy and a tough one?
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Personally, I feel he should continue jumping around, but at fewer locations with objectives for him to attack. These objectives will serve as a Healing Mechanic for Grond if he is left alone. Say they're just big radiation canisters. He will attack and destroy them and they will release radiation which would heal him over time. To prevent this, players can pick them up and carry them away, but be weary, these would attract Grond's attention and are heavy objects to carry around, and potentially leaking radiation all over the carrier's body, weakening them.
To properly dispose of these canisters, they can be delivered to a location, or perhaps a PRIMUS Ospery, which will take them away. Should the heroes successfully secure the cargo, Grond would become enraged and begin to attack the players with more attacks, probably those similar to the Teleios Ascendant/Onslaught version of Grond as well as a few other tricks. Heroes carrying the canister, but become defeated while doing so would drop it where they were for Grond or other Heroes to get after.
After the canister has been consumed by Grond or secured by the Heroes, Grond's jump timer will tick down before he moves on to find another canister. Of course, the amount of locations he jumps to and from would be reduced, maybe to 5 or so.
So, to recap:
-Grond would jump between 4-6 locations to find Radiation Canisters. Radiation Canisters can be destroyed by Grond to empower him until he jumps to the next location to find more.
-Heroes can carry the Radiation Canisters, which slow them down immensely and leak radiation over them in order to prevent Grond from consuming them.
-Canisters secured by Heroes will enrage Grond, but without radiation to fuel him, he will seek out more.
To balance:
-Heroes carrying the Canister will have their Travels locked out and will become Snared. In addition, the leaking radiation will deal increasing amounts of Particle Damage over time. This DoT effect will also antagonize Grond, building his threat toward the carrier the longer they carry it. The DoT effect will persist but dissipate quickly if the carrier drops the Canister.
-Heroes can drop the Canister so others may carry it, but PRIMUS Support will take a while to arrive so the Canister may be secured. You're playing Hot Potato AND Monkey in the Middle.
-Upon consuming the Canister, Grond will heal over time and be granted Defensive benefits until he jumps away. Upon Heroes securing the Canister, Grond will become enraged, gaining access to more devastating attacks and moving much faster. Upon either, Grond will eventually exhaust his rage or acquired radiation and jump away, seeking out a new Canister for him to try to consume.
That's just my suggestion for him. It won't be easy to implement at all due to the way Grond works, but I feel it would make for a definite Cosmic fight.
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And get scolded for jumping back into the fight too soon.
Why even have the pools, though, if (assuming they manage to balance the mechanic on a razor's edge) having everyone stand in them "zeroes out" Grond?
Why not just have him deal some amount of particle damage to everyone within X distance as if everyone was standing in some hypothetical pool and be done with it?
Why do you consider forcing people to stand in the pools a necessary hoop to jump through?
This is the Cybermind mechanic simplified and creates another static fight.
We have static fights; Everyone has to stand on this same platform against Kiga for fear of frost tombs. Everyone has to stand at the side of Dinomom to avoid her tail and breath attacks.
Now you want people to have to stand in the pools for Grond?
I want them to figure out a way to let people keep their travel powers on and have a fight where smart heroes are rewarded for moving around.
Rather than having to stand in radioactive goo just because, maybe they could have several different sources of radioactive leaks in the area, with different ones popping up at random and some player has to go to the leak and stop it... Turn off the valve, patch the barrel, whatever.
Same effect only more action and more sense.
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You kind of made my point for me, though. It's the same design strategy as the other cosmics, but with a different twist that people will have to learn, that isn't necessarily natural for them. Every well-designed boss utilizes some such mechanic, be it not attacking dogs in Kigatilik, carrying the siphon in Teleios Ascendant, or dropping everything and picking up TA Medusa's orbs. Learning to stand in the pools would be the gimmick for this fight (or one of them, anyway).
While the idea of a more mobile fight certainly seems desirable, the game simply doesn't support it well, because every travel power is different, and mobility punishes melee. But what is needed isn't necessarily more mobility, but more complexity. For example, the need to rotate Grond would introduce a degree of dynamism, as players would have to reposition. Furthermore, when the pools appear, players need to divide themselves up properly to fit into the pools (without any one pool having too few people). That also adds a degree of complexity to the fight beyond "the boss does X damage to you".
Why have the pools if doing things right cancels it out? The same reason destroying Qwyjibo's hearts prevents him from healing. It's more complex and dynamic. It's a problem that players have to deal with, in addition to what they would normally do. Therein lies the key to a dynamic fight.
The idea of having players need to interact with objects is a good one, as demonstrated in the Nightmare Invasion event, but it suffers the problem of being a mechanic that necessarily only involves a relatively small amount of players. The others would simply go about their business as usual. Also, I didn't want to use it here because we just got done doing it in the event, and I therefore feel it would be better served for something further into the future. I do, however, disagree that it somehow involves more action on the part of players. Both ideas involve players being forced to find a specific place and do a specific action (interact with an object, find a space to stand in). There isn't a significant difference in complexity; only the number of players taking part.
It's strange that you describe the Cybermind fight as being static, because it's easily the most dynamic of the custom alert boss fights. Rather than being able to simply stand there and beat the boss into pulp, a certain amount of knowledge, awareness, and movement is required at specific times during the fight.
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And while we're on the topic of what makes sense, where are these environmental hazards going to come from? It's not like Grond can reasonably summon those repeatedly over the course of a battle. The bigger problem, though, is that what you're both describing is just Qwyjibo or Shadow Colossus mk2. It's not in any way new. If people want to fight Qwyjibo, they will. There's no need to have another. Forcing people to self-organize to keep a sufficient number of people (not too many or too few) in each pool would be a new twist on the same design principles of the other cosmics.
Part of the deal with Grond is that the Irradiates worship him as a god. Thus if they see heroes trying to kill their god then they will jump in and do something about it. Maybe catapulting various sorts of barrels at the heroes... And they seem to have a nearly endless supply of radioactive goop.
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I fail to see your logic for how having players absorb radiation that would otherwise heal Grond doesn't make sense. Clearly, you don't like the idea, and that's perfectly fine, but that doesn't make it nonsensical.
You still have the issue, though, that just forcing players to shut things off occasionally is effectively just a rehash of the Shadow Colossus fight.
That said, I'm not opposed to some sort of hybrid idea, where radioactive barrels show up that need to be shut down in addition to the other stuff.
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